Welcome to Beyond Co-Op, a weekly piece that talks about industry stories that may or may not be related to co-op gaming.

Brink has been out for less than a week, recieving mixed reviews.  Bethesda and Splash Damage have acted quickly to address some fan concerns.  Apparently, many gamers have experienced serious lag while playing online. To rectify this problem, a new update limits the amount of human players to 8 in Campaign and Freeplay modes. This applies to players "with lower upstream bandwith."  If you haven't noticed a problem with lag, you can connect via the "Big Teams" option in Free Play and Private matches, as seen above.  That will put you in 16 player games.  This update somehow requires no download, and is available now on the Xbox 360.  (I popped it in and it's there, as if by magic. No, no, don't tell me how they did it.  I like my world filled with wonder and amazement.)   It will go into effect on the PS3 when the PSN is up and running.  The PC versions is getting some fixes, as well.

This new Fear 3 video is for a four player survival mode aptly titled "F**ckng Run!".  You and three teammates must run from safe house to safe house in an attempt to outrun and encroaching "Wall of Death".  This wouldn't be so bad, but there are enemies in the way to make your life difficult.  You can revive fallen allies; actually, you must revive fallen allies.  If just one teammate is touched by the death cloud, it's game over, so you can't simply run ahead of everyone else.  The old "I don't have to outrun the tiger, I just have to outrun you!" philosophy won't help you here.  This is one of the two announced 4 player online co-op modes. The other is called "Contractions", and it seems to be a straight Call of Duty Zombies clone.  The game also features a co-op campaign which can be played via split screen or online.  Looks like Fear 3 will have plenty of co-op options for us when it comes out next month.

Saints Row: The Third has announced community sharing tool for your customized characters.  Now your friends can use your personally crafted persona in their own games.  The Initiation Station will offer players a chance to share each other's avatars:

The latest video for Hunted: The Demon's Forge places your foes in the spotlight.  This developer diary covers the different types of enemies you'll be battling when the game releases at the end of the month.  The minotaur race is looking particularly brutish.  If you want to check out more information on the title that has earned the moniker, "spears of war", you can read our hands on preview here.

Earlier this week an enormous patch was applied to the lately installment of the Total War series, Shogun 2. The bulk of the update seems to be fixes, but there's some unit tweaking, DirectX 11 support, and even four new multiplayer maps included as well. We found the game to be a great co-op strategy/RTS game, giving it an impressive 4.5 out of 5. For the full list of patch notes, read on:

Enter for a chance to win a brand new Intel Core i5 processor, a copy of Operation Flashpoint: Red River, and ROXIO PC Game Capture software in our latest contest. We have 5 prize packs available for you to win - read on to find out how to enter!

Lightbox Interactive to the wraps off the rumored Warhawk sequel today.  Starhawk though looks to change things up - instead of simply a "flying game in space" - Starwhawk mixes ground and vehicle combat with RTS elements while still maintaining the feel of the series.  For instance players can erect walls and defensive structures to alter battles as well as call in different vehicles through a Build and Battle menu.

I have fond memories of playing the first Serious Sam game.  Humor elements like that of Duke Nukem, plus huge hordes of enemies in a gorgeously rendered setting made for a great time.  Recently, the Serious Sam games were given the HD makeover, and this weekend, each game is on sale for a whopping 75% off!  That's a really... er... serious savings!  Definitely worth picking up if you are a fan of fun.

It's time once again for the E3 rumor mill to start churning up some great stuff before the show. This year the big buzz is around the new Nintendo console (code named "Project Cafe" for now, but also referred to as WiiHD and Wii2), as some preliminary specs (or rumors of specs) have begun to surface. The new system itself has been confirmed by Nintendo, shooting for a 2012 launch, but the rest is all bits and pieces found from various sources. Here's what we're hearing so far.

Operation Flashpoint: Red River is almost upon us.  Okay, if you're in Europe it's already here.  Nuts to you!  In this latest developer diary the good folks at Codemasters discuss the new command wheel used for giving orders, the graphical details of bombs and getting shot, and a host of other things.  They manage to do all this while sitting in some sort of dilapidated warehouse.  Man, I thought my work space was bad.  The game is supposed to be an incredibly realistic military shooter, which is just a fancy way to say that bullets killify everything real good.